9 Things Siri Could Learn to Do

Just four months old, much has already been written and said about Apple's speech-recognition "personal assistant," Siri. It's the kind of technology that both excites and incites pundits and consumers alike. Though still in its tech infancy, pondering Siri's potential for future integration rouses many, including us.

Apple's recently filed patent application for "intelligent automated assistant 1002" shows just how smart the technology really is and how far it's destined to go. Apple's plans for Siri include helping distracted drivers, the elderly, the disabled, and those just confused by the many differing ways of interacting with their array of devices.

At Siri's core, literally, is active ontology. Active ontology takes the elements of ontology (the objects and concepts of being) and applies a systemic, task-oriented approach to processing them. So, right now, Siri's young world is limited to idle chitchat about restaurants, the weather, sports, and travel, but as Siri experiences more, it will expand its areas of expertise. Considering that ontology is philosophically concerned with the nature of existence, Siri's artificial intelligence could start to feel uncanny. Siri is also a master of the semantic, able to understand nuanced language in its proper context. For example, it can process the word "Italian" appropriately as a language, cuisine, or person in the framework of a conversation.

Keeping track of all this isn't an issue for Siri, which is programmed with long- and short-term memory. Like a person, Siri will get to know users better over time, learning their phrasing, preferences, and the places they visit and adjusting to respond more appropriately. It knows, for instance, when users are currently visiting an unfamiliar city and when users are in their hometown.

Siri's not the only one of its kind. Its similarly talented sisters, Majel (a voice assistant Google is working on) and the newborn Evi (from True Knowledge), will also be up for these nine jobs to which Siri aspires.

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Targeted advertising can hit even a moving target. Through the recording of clicks, impressions, keywords, and other data, Siri can master the art of the pitch. It can adapt advertising techniques to find the most appealing message for a user and combine that with where and when he or she is most likely to buy. Take a woman that tends to make impulse purchases on the way home after a long day at the office, for example. Siri could pipe up on her after-work walk to the train just as she nears a store with sale on a dress similar to one she abandoned in an online shopping cart the week before.